To appreciate what Greaves has gone through up to this point you have to go back 16 years, to a time when, at age 34, he made a decision that completely changed his life.Leah Hennel / Postmedia

To appreciate what David Greaves has gone through up to now, you have to go back 16 years, when he made a decision that changed his life

PYEONGCHANG — A few weeks ago, when an email popped into his inbox at 5 a.m., David Greaves could hardly bear to look.

He’d been waiting on it all night, tossing and turning, occasionally catching a few minutes of fitful sleep, always listening for that tell-tale message alert.

Almost two decades of work was riding on the contents of that single missive and it surely contained either joyous or crushing news.

The 50-year-old from Winnipeg finally got up the nerve to open the file — which came from the Olympic Committee of Israel — and was immediately awash with the greatest feeling in the world.

“There it was,” Greaves says. “It said ‘Congratulations David and A.J., you are Olympians.’ The emotions were outrageous.”

The A.J. referred to in the email is A.J. Edelman, an American-Israeli skeleton racer, who will soon become the first person to ever compete for Israel in the sport at the Olympics.

His appearance at the Alpensia Sliding Centre is the culmination of four years of intense work that included quitting his high-paying job, selling everything and living out of start houses and training facilities.

For Greaves, it’s the single most gratifying moment in almost two decades of pure dedication to a sport and a country.

***

To appreciate what Greaves has gone through up to this point you have to go back 16 years, to a time when, at age 34, he made a decision that completely changed his life.

He joined the Israeli bobsled team.

He would never describe himself as a pure athlete, but he had two things going for him — size and Israeli citizenship. Though he grew up in Winnipeg, his Jewish faith helped him identify as Israeli.

In 2002, he was living in Calgary when he was asked to help form the Israeli bobsled team along with former U.S. Air Force pilot Aaron Zeff and former San Francisco 49ers tight end John Frank, a two-time Super Bowl winner.

“They called my buddy Rich Nairn, who works for the Arizona Coyotes, and he said ‘Call Greavy, he lives in Calgary, he’ll do anything basically.’

“Two weeks later, I found myself in the back of a bobsled and the rest was history.

I was just hooked, I couldn’t get out.”

Along with Moshe Horowitz, the Israeli team attempted to qualify for the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin. Greaves served as the brakeman.

Israel’s skeleton coach David Greaves, left and athlete A.J. Edelman pose for a photo in the Olympic Sliding Centre.

They didn’t make it, but they twice qualified for the world championships, competing in Germany in 2004 and Calgary in 2005.

Still, they all felt a tremendous sense of pride in representing their heritage.

“I remember John coming to me back in the day when we were training in Calgary and he said ‘Greavy, this is the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done in my life.’ And I said ‘You won two Super Bowls man.’ But he said, ‘No, no, no, with you guys, doing this for Israel, this is so meaningful.’

“That meant so much to me to hear that.”

When they retired from the sport after the 2006 season, Greaves didn’t want to leave.

“It was a great honour for me to be able to compete for Israel … it actually changed the trajectory of my life,” Greaves says.

“When it was over I missed the start house, I missed all the athletes, I missed the sound of the P.A. I just wondered how I could stick it out and what I could do.

“So I’ve been the president of the Olympic bobsled-skeleton federation for Israel for about 10 years.”

It’s basically a non-paying, full-time job. While he works as a professional fundraising consultant in Winnipeg during the day, he can often be found at midnight or 1 a.m., conducting calls with his national Olympic committee in Israel, where the clock is eight hours ahead. He spends much of his spare time identifying potential athletes to compete for Israel, arranging travel and passports and taking care of all the administrative duties.

It hasn’t always been fun and there have been many times when the politics of it all prompted Greaves to consider simply giving up the dream. But he persevered, time and time again.

“It’s a labour of love,” he says.

“And now there’s this big breath of life breathed into it. Now the Olympic committee of Israel will look at investing in this program. There’s a real future for this program so it’s been worth that labour to get to where we are.”

***

Greaves is standing at the top of the Olympic sliding track in Pyeongchang, a wickedly cold wind causing his eyes to tear up, and he’s barely able to believe it’s real.

“I think back at the many times I thought ‘I’m just closing, I’m shutting this thing down cause it’s not working and we’re having all kinds of problems, bureaucratic problems,’ he says.

“We stuck it out and here we are.”

He was thinking about how even good friends back home in Winnipeg would sometimes snicker when he talked about his role with the Israeli federation.

How many people thought him to be just a dreamer? How many laughed off his chances of actually pulling this off? There were many.

“When I told my friends that we had actually qualified a sled, it wasn’t vindication, it was just such a relief to finally be able to tell people ‘We did it, we’re going to the Games, it wasn’t all a joke,’ Greaves says.

Israel’s skeleton athlete A.J. Edelman at the Olympic Sliding Centre.

“This is it. This is what I’ve been doing this for. People understand it now because it’s a reality and before it was really more of a dream. Clearly, the way my path went, I wasn’t going to be an Olympian. I’m pretty close right now and that’s a dream I’ve had for 42 years.”

***

Edelman, sporting a yarmulke on his head under his sleek helmet, is getting ready for his training runs but takes the opportunity to speak about how much Greaves has meant to skeleton racing in Israel.

He’s 26 years old and is the first Orthodox Jewish male Olympian. He calls himself the Hebrew Hammer and has become a popular figure on the World Cup circuit.

He has a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked as an engineer at software giant Oracle before he gave everything up to pursue this dream, starting in 2014.

“His last known address was in San Francisco,” Greaves says. “He’s been living at tracks and training facilities for the last three years, basically.”

When Edelman starts talking about Greaves, he can’t keep the superlatives in.

“What he has done here is unbelievable,” Edelman says. “The dedication is immense. Anybody affiliated with bobsled-skeleton Israel is here because of David.

“Sliding is the easy part. It’s like a monkey banging on a typewriter. You just go down as many times as possible and destroy your brain. David is the brains behind the whole thing and this is a testament to everything he has done.”

Edelman looks around and points out some of the support staff from other countries. There are coaches, administrators, medical personnel, physical therapists, dozens of them wearing German colours or Latvian or Chinese or American or even Canadian.

“Everybody here has an army of support staff,” Edelman says.

“David is an army of one. That army of one got to the same place that an army of 100 others did. That, to me, is insane. That’s why I love David to death.

“These are David’s Games.”

***

Edelman will officially begin competing on Feb. 14 and 15 and Greaves will be beside him every step of the way, serving as coach, mentor and official videographer.

Greaves, a married father of a 12-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy, doesn’t feel any pangs of jealousy about not being the one going down the slide, not being the one to finally compete for that Olympic medal.

“It’s actually a relief because, to be honest, I don’t think I could ever do it again,” he says. “I don’t think I could even put a helmet on again after having done it so many times and crashed many times in my life in a bobsled.

“It’s nice to be doing it the way I’m doing it now. I can live vicariously through these athletes who are much younger than me and I’m providing an avenue for them too.

He has qualified for the Olympics, one of only 30 skeleton racers out of hundreds who compete at a high level, and he’s going to enjoy every minute of his opportunity to represent Israel on the world stage.

If he can finish in the top-25 when the races get underway Feb. 14-15, Edelman will be thrilled. Just being at the Olympics as the first Israeli athlete to qualify in a sliding sport is his gold medal.

“It’s incredible, it’s so hard to describe because I think there’s a level of pride sliding for Israel that I don’t think can be felt by other nationalities,” Edelman says. “It sounds narcissistic to say but there’s something else there, in sliding for Israel, as a Jew. Even when landing in the country, there’s a special feeling. You feel like you’ve come home.

Coach and mentor, David Greaves of Winnipeg, says the 26-year-old Edelman has already reached for the stars and grabbed a handful just by getting here.

“To not have a coach to work with year after year and to basically get here on the shoe-string that we’ve had was a huge accomplishment,” Greaves says. “We don’t think we’re going to come in last place, we think we’re going to edge toward top-25 and that would be great.”

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.